Some country people in Oxfordshire, it is said, attribute the
crime of egg-stealing to hedgehogs, and believe that they carry off the eggs on their backs, presumably fixed on a spine Hedgehogs are greatly disliked by keepers, and ruthlessly killed, but I doubt if they often eat an egg, much less carry it away, though they will certainly make a bird desert her clutch. I have seen evidence of a gull carrying off a guille- mot's egg by the simple method of driving the beak into it ; and a neighbour of mine last year saw a rook flying with an egg, thought to be a pheasant's egg, carried on his tip-tilted beak. When they come to eat the egg, gulls, which I have watched for a considerable while at the meal, break one side of the shell and lap up the contents in a ludicrous resemblance to a drinking hen. Gravity aided by a jerk of the head seems necessary fqr the rather laborious process.
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